Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

Advocates are trying to dispel the common perception that medical treatment needed to alleviate gender dysphoria isn’t real health care.

Des Moines Register:
Transgender Iowans: Health Care Can Be A 'Terrifying Experience'
[Aiden] DeLathower is one of a growing number of transgender people seeking medical care they believe is needed to make their brain match their body, experts said. But for many gender nonconforming people, health care can be difficult to access. Obstacles include a lack of specialized services, exclusions in private or public insurance coverage or the high price of full medical transition, which The Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery estimated could cost more than $100,000.As transgender people begin to feel more comfortable coming out and living as the gender with which they’ve always identified, they are facing a “patchwork of rampant discrimination amid pockets of progress” in the health care industry, said Harper Jean, the National Center for Transgender Equality’s policy director. (Crowder, 12/15)

The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Shortage Of Injectable Estrogen Unnerves Transgender Community
Concentrated estrogen, paired with a testosterone blocker, is central to what’s now known as the “gender-affirmation” process. In mid-2015, Par Pharmaceuticals and Perrigo Co., which make Delestrogen and generic estradiol valerate, respectively, stopped shipments of the 10-ml, 20-ml, and 40-ml injectable dosages of the hormones, waiting for FDA clearance for their new active-ingredient supplier. That approval is still pending, and existing stock in Philadelphia, a hub for the trans community, seems to have eclipsed this summer. (Friedman-Rudovsky, 12/16)

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